A noodle maestro dishes up chow for your eyes

The Chinese believe that the province of Gansu, located in one forlorn corner of the country's north-west, is the birthplace of noodles.

Even if you contest the historicity of the claim - I don't dare to! - you'll change your mind after seeing the ever-smiling but speechless Zhang Fu Gui (nicknamed 'Chang', perhaps inspired by a character in Tintin in Tibet) hand-pulling noodles at the Italian-Chinese restaurant ChaoBella.

As you'd expect from the Chinese Dragon, it has overwhelmed the Italian side of ChaoBella entirely because of the inventive leadership of its master chef, Wong Kwai Wah.

Zhang Fu Gui, 26, has been pulling noodles since the time he was 15 - he produces 64 strands in a minute

He's the Singaporean who's been known as Sam since he came to work at The Oberoi's Taipan restaurant 10 years ago. And his latest discovery is Zhang, who's all of 26 and handpulling noodles (at an eyepopping rate of 64 strands in a minute) from the age of 15. Sam had to tap an extensive network of sources to reach to Zhang, who took six months to move to India because back home he makes close to 500 kilos of noodles a day and therefore is indispensable.

Getting Zhang to come, though, was not the end of Sam's problems. The noodle maker needs flour (maida) with high gluten content so that the dough doesn't break when he stretches it endlessly. The only flour Sam's kitchen had was the low-gluten variant that suffices for dim sum. Sam and Zhang therefore set out on an expedition in search of high-gluten maida and they found it at the end of a tiring day at Modi Mills, Delhi's oldest surviving flour production facility, almost in their backyard.

Hand-pulling noodles is a dying art because it makes greater sense to get machines to mass-produce. Noodles pulled by hand become useless after two hours because they dry up; machine- produced alternatives laden with preservatives last much longer. But there's no match to the drama of a chef hand-pulling noodles for you to tuck into. The gentle energy of the operation - patting a blob of dough with onion oil to give it aroma, stretching it, rolling it, pulling it, bathing the noodles in boiling water for 10 seconds and finally drizzling them with onion oil - stokes your digestive fires as you stay riveted to the action.

Zhang makes six kinds of hand-pulled noodles and two varieties of the knife-shaved ones - when he was making these, I feared he would slash his hand with his oddly shaped knife, but Zhang shaved away, impervious to the unstated fears of the people around him. And for each variety of noodles, Sam has prepared a dish you wouldn't find at any Chinese eatery in the city.

The 'super fine' noodles, Sam insists, must only go into a soup, like the one with the Beijing Shiu Jiao (prawn and chicken) Dumplings in dry anchovy stock (`750). It was bliss in a bowl.

The 'garlic chive' noodles came with the Fujian Meat Balls (an impeccable mélange of fish and pork) bathed in the fiery Xiamen sauce (`750) - Xiamen is the province next to Fujian. The normal noodles were stir-fried with shiitake and shredded chicken (`675) - there's nothing remarkable about the preparation, but it is soul satisfying. The shaved noodles arrived in a Sichuan-style spicy vegetarian soup loaded with bok choy (`575) that could unclog even the most resolute nose block. In between, to break the monotony, Sam served pork cutlets on yellow bean sauce and chilli paste (`750). It was like having a memorable hot dog during the intermission of a blockbuster film.

The noodles felt light and Sam's choice of accompaniments made it a feast. I believe that ChaoBella, despite its strategic location near some of the most upscale neighbourhoods, hasn't got it due. If you haven't become a ChaoBella fan yet, the Sam-Zhang jugalbandi will convert you into one. -